What are the ways in which youth can transform into a parliamentarian of India
Around 11% of the Indian population falls into the age group of 25-30, highest compared to any other country worldwide. Only 1.5 percent of these youth have contested in the MP elections of 2019. It’s curious to know what is the cause for this under-representation by the youth and why they are reluctant to participate in the elections.
Even though the proportion of representation of MPs in the parliament has increased from 8% in 2014 to 12% in the 2019 elections, there is a lack of push to contest in the elections. The youth have the potential to bring about a difference that is lacking in the present political system. Youth should become the face of new India and hence our Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in his Mann ki Baat address of 31st December, 2017 shared the idea of youths becoming the face of India.
We know with the enthusiasm of youth and the zeal to bring about a change, we can build India to fulfill the dreams of our freedom fighters.
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Here are the different feeder lines through which the youth can enter into the Indian Parliament:
- Dynastical Politics: (Eg: Rahul Gandhi, Nikhil Kumarswamy and many more)Most of the youth who are contesting in the elections fall into this category. Here they come from a strong political background, where their family members have already made a name, they usually sustain and maintain the stream and use the leverage to enter into politics. This sounds lucrative, but this is not so useful for society.
- Become a Public Figure: You excel in a non political field, become a public face, build a strong follower base, once you have built a fame, you can exploit that fame to enter politics. For example: Navjoth Singh Siddhu, Gautham Gambir, Hema Mailini etc. Here these people wouldn’t have worked hard in their respective streams to enter into politics. This might not be fruitful in the longer run.
- Working as a Civil Servant: Here an IAS officer or any servant for that matter, will be working as a civil servant under a particular politician, get close to them and take that root to smoothly enter into the politics. Eg: P.L. Punia. Or there are leaders like Arvind Kejriwal who entered into the politics seeing the trouble during their work and want to bring a change.
- Climbing up the ladder: Join the student wing in the college or university, earn respect of other students and become a leader. Get noticed by the leader in the parent parties and then enter into mainstream politics. Every party has its student wing like the ABVP for BJP, NSUI for the Congress, CYSS for AAP and so on. Eg: Arun Jaitlee. But the current trend has changed even in student politics, where now the children of riches or the politicians become student leaders. And also we can see that in most of the professional colleges there are no student unions.
- Influence: People who are rich, use their money, power and influence to enter into politics. These people who are rich fund the politicians during elections, they are hand in glove with local administration and hence use their power to get their seats.
- By working in the office of politician: It might be someone who is working as a PA for the politician or working as an intern and helping leader in policy making or handling social media. By working with the leader you start knowing other political leaders, start building your political circle and then become a leader themselves.
We understand that young blood is required to enter into politics, but there are many factors that are stopping them from doing so. Young leaders are lacking a platform through which they can capitalize to gain popularity and momentum which is very much required to stand strong in politics. There is a need for a platform for the youth that helps them to uplift their political recognition. Platforms like MyLeaders can help these youth who are very much interested in politics by providing a digital platform to showcase their presence online. Here we’re even planning to provide mentor-ship and guidance to young leaders which helps them to project their spirit of development.
There are debates on why can’t there be proportional reservations for youth, when there are reservations based on gender, caste. What are your thoughts on the same? Write to us about your thoughts.